Random acts of violence with Shipmaker

[jwa8402]

Ug I went back through and realized how sloppy and unbalanced some of those ships really are. I've added a hardpoint limit to each class that affects the number of weapons and point defense they can have. Hopefully this will help with ships like the yamato and battlestar that had too many.

Also bummed out about the shields. The GSB ones look excellent but on the hud display they show up as a big black blob. TBE's shields change color on the hud as they are damaged which looks like a cool damage display but it also looks bad stretched for the big ships. Any ideas?

I think I enjoy building these far more than I do balancing them. I hope people will point out inaccuracies because in many cases I've never heard of these ships, and at this point I'm starting to run out of steam for doing them as accurately as I could.

[Bad Boy]

Alright, I am, as I said, quite busy, but I will test em as soon as possible (I'll do something within 24 hours for sure). I'm not sure how many of them I'll get through, or how in depth my balance checking will be, but I'll try to give you something to work with.
For what it's worth, I'll mostly be doing medium-large fights, so that should show some different results than yours.
I'll get back to you when I've tested em.

[Son Tzu]

Hmm, not sure about the WhiteStar class, the general shape looks more or less correct, but they're much more curvy and organic looking than that. B5 storyline has them as semi-organic, being a combination of Vorlon and Minbari technology. Don't know how you'll get the texture right for it, maybe some streched doo-static set on a low animation speed. I may have a go at making a shadow ship...

[jwa8402]

Sheesh people are so hard to please

[Son Tzu]

Damn straight! We demand perfection! And better! All the time! And more often than that! Heh heh heh...
Sorry dude, didn't mean to bust your chops. Just had a look back through the thread, all those ships...feel slightly embarrassed to offer c&c now!
Liking the texture effect, wondering how...Made a shadow vessel, it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. The main hull weren't too bad but the arms defeated me. Think I'll post it anyhow so people can see why excessive stretching just don't work

[jwa8402]

Lol don't worry about it, it was total sarcasm since I'd been wanting to do the same thing but was too lazy And please continue with the c&c; I get fairly few comments so I enjoy whatever feedback I get, even if its telling me I got a ship totally wrong. Did the textures by cutting a slab of armor from a whitestar pic and pasting it into the non-black areas of the sprites. I've got the shadow texture somewhere if you want it but ya the arms are why I haven't attempted the shadows, narada, or a few other ships. I'd love to see your version!

[HorseMonster]

Beliskner. Thor's spaceship is called Beliskner.

[Son Tzu]

I've started my own thread, it's in there. Damn, where do I remember the narada from? Aagh, that's gonna bug me 'til I get it...

[Bad Boy]

Klingon BOP seems useless, it takes 3 of them to kill 1's shields. Their one strength is their odd toughness, making them good meat shields. But the drawback to that is that they're irritating, cause they do no damage and take too long to die. At least the York Towns can go down in a blaze of glory pretty quickly.

The galaxy's grav beam is screwed up, 100% energy, recharges faster than it uses once it hits 100%. Still, it's a lot of fun to lasso around meteors until they leave the map. Also, what's with the zero damage missile launchers?

Not really a problem, but why does the Norway use scatter beams rather than m beams. Another non-problem, the Jem Hadar Battleship is on flanking ai, which is weird because it's a battleship, and irritating because flanking ai tends to break weapons that aren't very quick moving, tracking, or beams.

U.S.S X-304's torps have no fire arc, making them difficult to actually use. However, I love its main beam, it's wonderful to cut through a ships shields with one quick blast.

Projectile weapons in general need some buffing, and interceptors need less damage. York Town's PD does twice as much damage (give or take) as its guns.

Also note that whatever you set the max speed to seems to be the speed the sections move at if suicided. What that means is that all the ships are excellent kkms, and rape their friendlies if they're clumped together in the slightest.
Another speed problem is general speed balance, if I recall correctly, you said that would be fixed, but it's still really weird to see a Warbird moving faster than a BOP.

What's with the demeters? Personally I think they should go, or at the very least be changed a lot, they're spammy and swarmy and ugly, and screw up everything except the Galaxy and the other one with a grav beam, and they don't seem to serve much purpose.

Torpedos need buffing, I understand why you have em with low damage (so they can't rape a ship without shields when shitspammed), but they're absolutely useless against shields. Up their damage by a bunch, and up their interceptability and/or their reload.

The Sovereign's disruptors seem useless. They'd be decent if they weren't so slow moving, but as it is, they have difficulty hitting anything, and when they do hit, they don't do much anyway. I'd suggest upping their bullet speed and damage, after all, they're only on the sovereign, and it needs something to make it really special.

That being said, I do love the sovereign, its size alone is great, and the phasers in every direction is a lot of fun. It does seem underpowered though, because once the shield is down it falls apart very quickly cause of there're only a few sections between the outside and the center of the front circle thing. 1v1 vs a Jem Hadar battleship (my other favourite ship here) it loses spectacularly once its shields are down.

That's everything for the moment, hope it helps.

[jwa8402]

Wow this is great and exactly what I needed. Problem is there got to be so many ships that to make any one change took quite awhile so I very often didn't get a chance to change other things.
BOP otta be fixed now. It was classified as a cruiser rather than destroyer because of a misplaced core, so its shields/hp were too high. Also upped its weapons since they were the small bore version.

Most of the ships will probably have grav beams but also adding PD back in seems to have helped things. The 0-damage missile launchers were for the phaser strip sprites so I could link them to the actual phasers without having them turn. The timing for the charging effect is still slightly off so there may be a better way to do it, IDK.

Fixed both Norway and Jem Hadar issues, good catch. Also fixed the x304s torps, I think I just mixed up which arc I was changing.

As far as demeters, their supposed to be psuedo fighters for ships like the battlestar that rely on them, but would it be better with actual fighters being deployed? I figured the grav beams would help balance it out but didn't make them strong enough. Plus I'd removed the PD on larger ships so ya that would screw them I imagine.

Good point on the torps. Again putting PD back in place will help balance against stronger torps. The Sovereign's new special is firing a spread of 5 non-tracking torps which is great against a large target like the borg cube or a fleet of oncoming smaller ships. Fixed the disruptors, that was just a last minute addon I was too lazy to finish. The speed issue will be based on class which is based on size so hopefully will be resolved in the next release. Hope I covered everything; I really appreciate you taking the time.

[Doogie12]

@Son TzuL: The Narada is from the new Star Trek movie that came out about a year and a half ago.
@Anyone: I would realllllly recommend against trying to build it (its freaking huge!) especially if you want it to compare to these ships. Maybe Anna or STARSTRUCK could handle it. <cough><cough>

[Bad Boy]

Great stuff man, I was more than happy to do it. You fixed the battlestar's nano too right?

Lemme know anytime you want more testing, it probably won't happen as soon, but it's possible.
Anyway, I look forward to the fixed balancing, and new weapons, etc.

Also, did you get my pm? Cause there were a couple more balancing things in there.

[Aurafire]

Galaxy quest! That's awesome! You, good sir, officially rock for "going there"

Anyway, I guess I'm too much of a newbie to advise on how to get better, but I'll tell you what I like in general:

I really like the lighting on the nose of the human vessels. It looks beautiful.

I'm not much of a star-trek buff, so I don't really know what to tell you as far as balancing goes.

[jwa8402]

Yepyep got it, thanks!

@Doogie: Ya I'm inclined to agree, though I did find a pretty sweet top down shot, we just don't have the sections to do it in a straight shot and I'm not any good at making larger shapes from small sections.

@Aurafire: Haha props for catching it, makes me feel better that anyone recognized it cuz its still rather sloppy. It will have red and green lasers lol. Ya the lights are a new feature but I think it will look nice especially if I can get registry numbers on some of the hulls. Not really inclined to though.

@Son Tzu: Not to steal your thunder but its hard to resist a challenge and seeing your version got me started. Hows this for a rough start?

[Doogie12]

I really love how that looks exactly like the image I found. You sir, are a master of Fanships. At least until I finish building my Scimitar for the BP hehehe